Just one question about basic performance

[Jacob Bugge]

Will the free flow of unified threads be retained, with successive posts filling the entire width, and with simple forum lists of threads, or:

A) Are we going to be put in boxes with forum member information to the left and possibly buttons to the left/right/bottom, so the flow is broken up and takes up far more space?

B) Will the threads be branched, so everything may become fragmented, and so subjects deserving their own threads will be buried deep?

C) Will the forum lists of threads be furnished with dividing lines and possibly arranged by subject rather than latest posts?

I believe those are the most fundamental question about the new forum; most other issues can be solved within the right frame, if needed.

Several times, strong pleas for mercy have been raised concerning threats A) - C).

It is so nice to easily find and pick a thread with new posts in the forum list, and then to run/read through and partake in a coherent and focused thread of successive posts, without things fading away in different directions, without the disturbance of having to cross unnecessary lines and perform unnecessary scrolling because of disturbing information, which might as well be reached by clicking the poster name or some popup button next to it in the line containing the poster name and time of posting.

Question(s) asked while anxiously waiting to see a preview.

[Jacob Bugge]

A downside to the non permanent login is that you have to login, but there is no login option when you enter a forum, only a logout option which falsely implies that you are logged in.

So you get all the red flags to welcome you as a newcomer. The simplest way to get rid of them and get started seems to be to click preferences, login, and enter the forum again.

[Bill12]

Leave the signature information as a short 1-line at the top of the message as it now is (or given an option). The avatar and other info in a block at the side, wastes a lot of space that provides little or no information on the topic to be discussed. If you want the avatar and related information, let that come up if the user name is clicked (or maybe a scroll over). The major thing I like about the Adobe forums is the use of space compared to the others.

I checked out the Nike site. The entry was a pain to have to chose a language, but I assume that can be gotten around. The big one for me was the user box at the left of each message that ends up wasting a lot of space. For short messages, it double or triples the vertical space. For long messages it leaves lots of white space on the left. Leave it as 1 line as currently done with the poster, date, time, and post number. If the avatars and such are to be used, leave that as a user preference.

One little comment follows John's statement about a change a few weeks back. That is when I started having trouble with the back button in my browser taking my to the top of the previous page. Somehow, it got fixed last night!

I thank John for his feedback that he has been giving.

[Claudio_González1]

I posted a question in another of these threads that seems to have got lost amongst other doubts/suggestions/complaints, so I will respeat it here.

When the merge comes, are we going to retain our long time screen names, or are we going to get the Adobe ones?

And I seem to have a new question, or maybe my memory is failing. Shall we recover the permanent login we are used to, or will we have to log in after every browser shut down? I ask because I have been perhaps the only one experiencing prmanent login problems at the other side.

[Jacob Bugge]

What Bill said.

I certainly hope the answer to both questions from Claudio is: the former.

[Kath-H]

You'll use the Adobe ID one Claudio, as I understand it, but I also think you'll be able to change it. I think.

[D__McCahill]

> are we going to retain our long time screen names

Well, apparently not. I was forced to relog-in today, and the system accepted me nicely, but refused to let me use my full name. Had to drop down to an initial.

Which means I need a hated signature on each message.

Don

Edit (OK, that is weird. I thought it was going to come up as D. McCahill, which was what it said was required in the log-in process. But I see Don being used here. Perhaps the changeover is not complete yet ???)

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

Don, the association of your WebX ID with your AdobeID has no effect on the current forums. It is just preparing the two systems to recognize you as the same person in both.

In the new system you will be using your Adobe ID and the screen name that you have selected for your Adobe ID. That screen name is changeable, but has to be unique.

Bill, the forum folks did make a small change last night in a redirect script because it was sometimes not redirecting out of https to http urls.

[Guest]

Question, John. My Adobe ID is DorothyK (or one of the two)... which was taken on the MM forums, so I had to create a different login for there. How is that going to work out?

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

The MM Forums don't have names. The accounts there pick up the name that is associated with your Adobe ID. Same thing will happen going forward. Your Adobe ID is the ID of record. So the screen name you have selected there will appear next to your messages.

[Guest]

if the "key" field is the adobe id, and it's there that "uniqueness" is enforced, why should it matter if there are 2 "DorothyK"'s? being displayed? why shouldn't they both be able to be just "Dorothy" if they want?

regulars might opt to customize their display names to be more easily identified by other regulars, but for a drive by just looking for quick help, why SHOULDN'T they be able to choose "Tom" or "Mary" even if there are already 100 Toms? haven't you ever been to a site that says "Welcome John/Dave/Dorothy, enjoy your stay."?

like we said, the uniqueness is ALREADY enforced in the adobe store id. what's displayed on the screen in the forum is a moot issue, and forcing another level of uniqueness serves no purpose except to stress the user (something to avoid in all cases where possible!)

I say let those display only forum ids be whatever the user wants them to be.

[Bill12]

Thanks John. Now I know that I am not going crazy. It was probably associated with a plug-in also, since others with SeaMonkey and FireFox were not seeing the issue. It works now as expected. Thanks again.

I am still concerned about the extra box that seems to in the works on the left to put in the author info. That is a big waste of space that is not needed. I guess I should not complain since the current forums have a fixed width and to not always make the best use of the space in that sense. Bill

[Guest]

I agree FA, as i posted here:
dave milbut, "Decisions from on high?" #32, 17 Feb 2009 11:25 am

>i was thinking the same thing. I think NO white-space on a line would simply make for an unreadable wall of text.

[Jacob Bugge]

Is it not possible to at least have the simple one liner poster view as an option?

Is there any information on the number of posts viewable with the Show All Messages?

Would a simpler appearance (option) not increase the number of posts viewable?

[PJonesCET]

I signed in when they first anoounced the change and I was directed to a page that told me to use the passowrd to get into adobe (my email) then the once I filled that out It asked to the account name i'd like toi Use I typed that. THen it had check mark which I checked to remember me., I did check. I was able to get in the rest of the day. Now I'm finding every time I sign in I am having to re-sign in.

Thankfully at least this time I didn't have to sign in for each message.

Now just everytime I've quit my Browser and started up again.

Can't they do anything with out messing up cookies?????

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

Not really. That is part of the issue with the current setup. Any small change is going to ripple throughout. The current template system is held together with chewing gum an duct tape. It is all drying out, getting brittle, and crumbling.

Right now we have two options.

* Continue on here until it finally bursts at the seams and all goes kaput. Then start a new system all over from scratch. No old content. Offline for months while a new system is built.

* Start preparing a new system while the old one still works. That way we can grab the old content and move it over. We have some warning. Maybe a weekend of downtime to move messages between systems.

In either situation we end up with a new system and a new look and feel. Scenario 1 might work out better by playing on the sympathy of users--everything's crashed and burned, nothing more can be done.

But I'm going with scenario 2 and trying to help everyone move from one system to the other. I've been around other forum systems where they just changed overnight with no warning to the users or that closed for maintenance and never quite got back online. We hope that giving a warning and updates makes it all easier for everyone.

John

[PJonesCET]

Well if you can just get back permanent cookies so that you don't have to sign it everytime you restart your web browser I would be happy. Don't say we didn't have them Because from the first time used Acroba 5.0 and signed it is had a remember me feature which ticked. And it day after day even though I might not turn computer on for days. until the first system meltdown when they tried to move us to the Macromedia system. I've got adobe cookies that are not set to expires until 2013 and other that won't unil 2038. long after I am gone to my heavenly (or where evrr) reward) I"m pusing 60 mighty hard.

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

No one ever said we didn't have Permanent Cookies here. We had them until last Friday. Then the system was changed to use session cookies.

We have never tried to move these forums to the Macromedia system. At least not in production. There was a move to do that in the Summer of 2006, but the project got killed before any work was done.

We did try to move the Macromedia forums over to this system in October 2007 and that was a disaster. This system crashed down to its knees taking 10 minutes to load a message. We had that in place for about 1-1/2 weeks trying to iron out the performance issues.

John

[Guest]

>Now just everytime I've quit my Browser and started up again.

I close my browser about once a week. it's not that big a deal. if that's the worst thing that happens to you (all) today, you should count yerselves lucky.

[PJonesCET]

Well I suppose if it temporary until they get stuff sorted out I can live with having to sign in one time each time I start my Browser.

By the way unlike other people that have unlimited budget for electricity I cut my computer off at night while I am sleeping. plus during spring and summer we have fairly heft T-storms. and even though I have a Trippe-Lite Surge unit I have my Computer equipment. I can't risk burning out my computer I don't have the funds to replace.

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

Concerning the "Sun" site:

Please can we NOT emulate that horrible layout?

The worst parts of that Site are:

1 Bad waste of page-space: Almost half the screen-height is wasted on their Banner and pre-thread pre-amble.

2. Worst of all is the very small window that provides a truncated "List of Topics" per page.

Currently, I can view some 60 threads per page in the Adobe Forums but the "Sun" layout provides the space for miserly 15.

This means that threads that drop down to the second page are very unlikely to get a response because I, for one, (and I suspect that I am not alone in this) never visit the second page unless I have a particular and pressing need to find, and refer to, an earlier discussion.

The irritatingly wasteful layout and truncated list of threads on the pages on the Macromedia Sites is the main reason that I almost never participate in them.

To the above, I plead that you should also spare us from:

1. Avatars and members self-portraits. Including these is an utterly puerile idea for a professional Forum. They are also a waste of screen space.

2. Signatures. These canned signatures are repetitious, unnecessary, space-wasting and very tiresome.

Also, while I do like to see the Moderators and Adobe personnel identified and acknowledged, I find the idea of labelling other contributors as "Forum Experts" or "ACEs" thoroughly deplorable because most of those that are so-identified in the Macromedia Forums seem to be neither "expert" nor even particularly knowledgeable so such labels are totally misleading!

Basically, there is NOTHING admirable in anything about the way that the Macromedia Forums were formulated.

[Guest]

ann, are you looking at the one's i linked in this thread? yea, they're ugly. check the links in this post:

dave milbut, "Decisions from on high?" #24, 17 Feb 2009 7:02 am

and the one right under it.

>2. Worst of all is the very small window that provides a truncated "List of Topics" per page. Currently, I can view some 60 threads per page in the Adobe Forums but the "Sun" layout provides the space for miserly 15.

I was gonna post earlier but got sidetracked by work. 😉 there are user options controlling # posts per page and # topics on the forum index page, i think the max is 50 for both.

>1. Avatars and members self-portraits. Including these is an utterly puerile idea for a professional Forum. They are also a waste of screen space.

I don't mind little ones, 30x30ish... it's the 300x400 ones that piss me off!

>2. Signatures. These canned signatures are repetitious, unnecessary, space-wasting and very tiresome.

agree. the only ones who should have sigs (or headers actually) are forum moderators and adobe personnel where they announce their status as "special" participants, imo. all others ARE a waste of space and annoying if you have to read them over and over and over and over.

>ncluding these is an utterly puerile idea for a professional Forum. They are also a waste of screen space.

so you're saying the java people and sun microsystems are NOT professional, or that graphic designers are overly pretentious and stodgy? careful or you'll have to turn in your Mac for a PC!!! :)

rank company
184 Sun Microsystems
651 Adobe Systems

XD

(just busting ann! gr&d)

[Guest]

looking again, there's really no need for #views and author column (views MAYbe) so some space could be saved there, leaving more room for the topic headers and keeping most of them from wrapping. there is a bit of wasted space horizontally too in that topic grid, but i think that could all be adjusted and tweaked out to make it "better"...

[Guest]

50 topics view on that pages is pretty cool. i just tried it.

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

>ann, are you looking at the one's i linked in this thread?

That was the one, Dave.

And the abomination which precedes it:

http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=427&start=0

:(

[Bill12]

Ann's point is evident in the sun reference she gave. Why does a user need to know when some one started checking the forums and such. It does not take long on a forum to see who the regulars are that have good answers. They are also available to answer your questions when asked. Many are professionals in their own right and do a great job with answers. However, for me at least, it is a lot easier to scan the messages without all the irrelevant information. Being able to select an individual to get more information would be fine. In modern times, a pass over could also be used - but that would slow the loading of the page.

Many of the things that are being requested can likely be done with preferences for those who want the avatars and other trivia versus those that do not want the author box, but just a header line as currently being used.